


winter lights

by rangerhitomi



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Background Misaki/Kourin, M/M, Winter Date, sharing a scarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21967480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: Aichi and Kai go on a date at a park. Well, maybe it's a date. Maybe they're just friends? Friends share a scarf and hold the other around the waist from behind and kiss each other on the cheek and hold hands, right?
Relationships: Kai Toshiki/Sendou Aichi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	winter lights

**Author's Note:**

> this is wish fulfillment because it's the date i want to go on but i'm too weenie to hold my crush's hand, much like kai
> 
> anyway, merry christmas

The soft  _ ting, ting  _ of bells ring out through the quiet park. Tiny pellets of ice mingle with the snow, reflecting the thousands of fairy lights as they fall to the ground. The tightly bundled patrons are almost exclusively couples, walking hand in hand through the low-hanging tree branches draped in lights and decorations, sipping coffees and hot chocolates out of little cups. 

Two high school boys walk along the winding stone path through the lights, their hot coffees already consumed. The smaller of the two, Sendou Aichi, watches his feet carefully, having slid on the wet stone several times now. The white and green and blue lights reflecting off every surface mask his red-faced embarrassment. To his side, Kai Toshiki stares ahead, eyes fixed on nothing in particular, with his hands in his pockets.

It was Aichi’s idea to visit the park, decorated for Christmas, and he spent three weeks getting up the courage to ask Kai to go with him--as friends, of course!--and Kai agreed to it with what Aichi took to be casual interest. The night is frigid, the ground slick, and Aichi has lost his gloves at some point between getting hot chocolate and disposing of the empty cup. His hands are becoming increasingly numb, but he can’t put them in his pockets the way Kai does, as he needs them to help his balance. 

They pause to watch a small band huddled under the shelter of a tent perform a song only vaguely familiar to either of them; Aichi thinks he’s heard it on one of Emi’s playlists. Too cold and wet for instruments, the band sings  _ a capella  _ with only the occasionally ting of a bell; here, he realizes, is the source of the soft noise ringing through the park. 

The song lyrics, about wanting to spend Christmas with a special person, cause Aichi to blush. He pulls up his scarf over his warming face (the only part of him that is warm) and tucks his frozen hands inside. Kai, for his part, seems unfazed; he stares over the top of the tent and has a distant look in his eyes, as if he isn’t really listening to the song at all and has something else on his mind completely.

_ You were able to transform my world _

“H-hey, Kai-kun…”

_ I want to love you more and more! _

He falters.

“What is it?” Kai turns his gaze on Aichi, whose throat is dry as he attempts to swallow.

“It’s, um, it’s… it’s cold, huh…”

He wishes he weren’t so cowardly when it came to flirting, because really it just makes him seem like a moron. He slaps himself inwardly.

“Yeah,” Kai says, either politely ignoring Aichi’s complete lack of social skills or not having enough of his own to question Aichi’s observation about the fact that snow, at night, during wintertime, is cold.

Aichi waits for Kai to maybe say anything, but he stares back up at the sky, even as the band starts singing a different song. 

“Sh-should we go to one of the warming stations?”

“Hm? Oh… sure.”

Kai seems distracted as they leave the performance area and head for one of the small metal pipes scattered throughout the park that blows out a steady stream of warm air. Aichi doesn’t realize why until he’s rubbing his hands in front of the warm air and sees two girls their age sitting together next to a warming station thirty yards up the path. They’re sitting so close their thighs are touching, and they share an oversized scarf, so their faces are close together, with Kourin resting her head on Misaki’s shoulder. There’s no mistaking them even from this distance.

“M-Misaki-san? Kourin-san?” Aichi blinks a few times. Were they--

\--yes, they were definitely holding hands.

“Do you want to say hello to them?” Kai offers, and he starts to move toward them, but Aichi throws out a hand and manages to get Kai to turn away so they could no longer see the girls. 

“N-no, I, I think they’re, um.” Is Kai this oblivious about what’s going on? Aichi wonders. “I think they’re on a, a, they’re…”  _ On a date,  _ he thinks, like he is with Kai--or is he? are they? does Kai think it’s a date or just Aichi?--but he can’t bring himself to voice the word. “They look like they could use some time a-alone.”

Kai is silent for a moment. He starts to turn to look at them, but instead steps a little closer to Aichi. It’s subtle, but enough to block Misaki and Kourin from Aichi’s view. “They’re probably warmer than we are,” he says, too casually, and Aichi’s brain short-circuits.

_ What does that mean? _ Aichi is thinking too much.  _ Is he suggesting something? Is he just making a comment about how they look warm sharing a-- _

_ Sharing a scarf… _

Kai isn’t wearing one, just Aichi. It’s not a large scarf, but it’s enough for two if they…

stand...

close...

together... 

“Y-yeah.” Aichi fiddles with the scarf, a soft red one. It would look good on Kai, he thinks. Kai always looks nice in scarves, especially the red one he wore during the Link Jok-- well, red was a nice color on Kai anyway. It takes him five years to move his numb fingers enough to pull his scarf off and another thirty years to drape it around Kai’s shoulders, with the end result that they were both old men by the time Aichi manages to pull the scarf around the both of them. 

(The whole thing takes thirty seconds.)

Their faces are close, now, much too close for Aichi, and he knows Kai can make out the flush in his cheeks. 

Is there color in Kai’s face too? Aichi is afraid to look up and see. They won’t be able to do this for much longer, since people will start getting annoyed at them hogging the heater and it’s impossible to walk with his face almost touching Kai’s chest.

Partly to help them be able to walk and partly because he doesn’t want Kai to see how red he’s getting, Aichi carefully turns around so he’s leaning lightly against Kai but still sharing the scarf. Comforting, but not too intimate, warm, but not stifling. 

“The snow is pretty.” Aichi gazes at the sky, daring to let himself sink deeper into Kai’s body as he tugs their shared scarf over his face again. “Isn’t it, Kai-kun?”

“Mm.” 

To anyone else, Kai’s wordless answer would be a sign of disinterest, but not to Aichi. This is Kai at his core, shy, quiet, contemplative. 

“The stars would be nice to look at tonight, too.” 

“They would.”

He doesn’t seem distracted anymore; rather, he sounds focused, the way he does when he’s about to have a cardfight.

“I know I still have a year and a half to think about it, but I… I want to study the stars when I go to university.”

“Oh?” Kai sounds moderately surprised. “Like the constellations?”

Aichi laughs; he can’t help it. “No, no, Kai-kun, that’s. Astrology. It’s not real science. I want to study cosmology.” He’s not quite ready yet to admit that he wants to be the one to discover the real planet Cray. Not that Kai would judge him for it. Vanguard, and Cray, were equally important to the both of them, after all. "The study of the origin of the cosmos, you know? Stars and planets and those things, where they came from and whether they formed in such a way they could sustain life... it would be worthwhile, I think."

"It sounds worthwhile," Kai replies, and Aichi smiles into the scarf again.

They begin to move, slowly--they both try to move at the wrong pace at first--but after a while, Kai rests his hands on Aichi’s waist and Aichi pulls the scarf over his nose to hide the huge smile filling his face. Really, he could be warm from Kai’s presence alone.

Together, they finish seeing the lights (Aichi is particularly fond of the lights wrapped around chicken wire shaped like a glowing bear or deer or lion), find Aichi’s lost gloves (he pockets them and goes back to holding Kai’s hands around his waist), and buy a couple of small gifts for their mutual friends from a few of the dozen vendors. Aichi is in the middle of remarking to Kai about how Misaki would in fact like the tiny German music box he bought for her when Misaki walks by them, hand-in-hand with Kourin, who was wearing her long hair under a hat and tucked in the collar of her coat so fewer people would recognize her.

A nod of acknowledgement from Kai and Misaki, a smile and friendly wave from Aichi and Kourin, and they pass each other by without a word. There is plenty of time to talk later. Tonight, they are here to be with just one person.

They reach the exit, not willing to part; Kai offers to walk Aichi home. They untangle themselves from the scarf--it's too hard to walk long distances together like that--and a gust of cold air chills Aichi where Kai's body had warmed him. 

Still, Aichi thinks as they reach his front door at last and Kai bends down with his eyes closed to brush his lips over Aichi's cheek, even the arctic air isn't enough to melt _this_ kind of warmth.


End file.
